Opinion Brief: Friday, September 26, 2014

Tonight’s Opinion Brief is brought to you by the Canadian Urban Transit Association (CUTA). CUTA is the collective and influential voice of public transportation in Canada, dedicated to being at the centre of urban mobility issues with all orders of government, and delivering the highest value to its members and the communities they serve.

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Good evening, subscribers. You know, some people think writing and passing laws is hard. It isn’t, really — not the way these people do it.

Parliament is expected to sprint through final passage of the Harper government’s new prostitution law — despite widespread criticism and the testimony of experts who insist the bill can’t survive a constitutional challenge. Steve Sullivan says the Senate in particular is shirking its duty to weed out bad laws. “Sex work is controversial and reasonable people can disagree on how to handle it in law. In fact, reasonable people should be expected to disagree about it. How much simpler it must be, in comparison, to be a Conservative senator: Wait for the prime minister to crack the whip — then jump.”

From our good friends at The Tyee we bring you Mitchell Anderson with a loaded question: Why did Stephen Harper sign the FIPA trade deal with China when even free-trade hawks are calling it a lousy deal for Canada? Could it be that he hopes to use it as a blunt instrument to negate the aboriginal Charter rights that are putting sugar in the gas tank of his government’s pipeline push? “Is Harper on crack? Of course not. Would he undermine Canada’s Constitution in cahoots with a foreign power to implement his agenda? It’s remarkable that such a question can be seriously asked.”

Jonathan Manthorpe takes a look around Europe’s eastern edge and comes to a disturbing conclusion: Vladimir Putin’s plan to ring Russia with a series of puppet states is proceeding nicely, NATO sabre-rattling notwithstanding. “Vladimir Putin ordered the withdrawal of some Russian troops from the separatist regions of eastern Ukraine this week, but it wasn’t a retreat. In fact, the Russian president now has what he wants: another Moscow-dominated buffer state protecting his flanks from NATO expansion.”

And Bloomberg’s Clive Crook gives President Obama something he hasn’t seen in years: praise for his foreign policy. He says Obama’s strategy to confront Islamic State — while not without risk — is the best option on the table right now and a welcome shift from the president’s habit of waffling. “The president is right to seek allies, right to say the U.S. won’t occupy territory, and right to stress the role that governments in the Middle East must play in suppressing the psychotic ideology of Islamic State and similar groups. The U.S. can’t succeed in this alone.”